Obama’s Stumbling and Bumbling Phone Call to the New York Times

Mar 10, 2009

RUSH: Folks, I think I have d’solution to our economic problems. It’s very simple. How are we going to work our way out of the next four years? It is so simple, my friends, only I could work it out. There are two premises. One premise is: America loves Obama. The other premise is: America dislikes Obama’s policies. What to do? They love Obama, but don’t like what he’s doing. Very simple. He stays president, we seize his teleprompter, and we send somebody out there to speak who understands economic growth while Obama stays president. That way, everybody will love Obama and we’ll get economic growth. All we need to do is get that teleprompter away from him. Well, here, let me show you. We’ve made this point. I realize many of you new tuner inners think I’m being cruel and mean spirited.

Not in the least. I am not tugged and I am not swayed by the tug of popular sentiment. I’m not a conventional wisdom guy. I don’t go along to get along. You know, one of the problems that we have? You want to explain Warren Buffett and Jack Welch? I mean, I can go a little further in explaining it to you. They believe — and this is partly our fault. They believe that if you espouse liberal ideas, people will think you have a big heart and that you have a lot of compassion, and that you care. And then after you do that, you can say what you want to say. But if you don’t articulate traditional liberal gobbledygook ideas, you are going to be thought of as a mean-spirited, capitalist pig, greedy SOB, wanting to destroy everything — and they don’t have the guts to stand up for capitalism.

So they capitulate and offer the phraseology and the words or whatever they think is necessary at the time, to make people think that they are liberal — and this is because we have failed. I’ve mentioned this countless times. We have failed to properly define conservatism as the genuine compassion and love for people. We’ve ceded that to the left. It’s the point I tried to make at the CPAC speech. Just take a look everywhere liberal Democrats have said to people, ‘We’re going to make your life better.’ Take a look where those people live and tell me if you want to join ’em. They don’t improve people’s lives. They destroy them, in fact, or damage them greatly. At any rate, Obama, as you know, had an interview with the New York Times on Air Force One last Friday, flying back from Columbus, Ohio, to the nation’s capital. And in that interview, the Times asked him about socialism.

And for some reason, when the plane landed, Obama, or somebody, said, ‘You know, I think you’re a little flippant on that socialist stuff.’ Obama thus thought it necessary to call the New York Times back and go for take two — which they granted him the opportunity to do, of course. Go for take two on what he thinks about socialism. I have that. It is about two minutes and 11 seconds. Now, we normally have a sound bite policy here of not playing a sound bite any longer than a minute, but in this case, I want to play the whole sound bite, as found on the New York Times website. Because what I want you to notice here, is listen to the stuttering, bumbling mannerism as he talks his way through this phone call — this backup, follow-up phone call to the New York Times. There is no teleprompter here. It is cringe inducing. And then to claim that Bush is the real socialist while he, Obama, is the free marketeer. So here it is, Barack Obama unplugged, including the prompter unplugged.

OBAMA: See, uhhh, I — I — eh — Just one thing that, uhh, I was thinking about as I was, uhh, — as I was — getting off the, uhhh, copter ’cause, I — uhhh — you know, it was hard for me to believe you were entirely serious about that socialist question.

ZELENY: Mmm-hmm!

OBAMA: Uhhhh, I — I — I did think it might be useful to point out that, uh, it wasn’t under me that we started, uh, buying a whole bunch of (pause) shares of banks. Wasn’t on my watch. And it wasn’t on my watch that we passed, uhhh, a massive new entitlement, uhh, the prescription drug plan without a source of funding. Uh, and so I think that, uh, it’s important just to note, uhh, when you start, uhh, hearing folks, uhh, throw these words around, thaaat (pause) .. Um, uh, we’ve actually been operating, uh, in a way that, uh, is entirely consistent with free market principles, uh, and that, uhhh, uh, some of the same folks who are throwing, uh, the word ‘socialist’ around can’t say the same.

ZELENY: Right. So whose watch are we talking about here, sir?

OBAMA: Well… Uh, heh, heh, heh. I — I — I — I just think it’s c-clear that by the time we had, uhhhhh. By the time we, eh, uh, got here, uhhh, ummm, there already had been, uh, an enormous infusion of taxpayer money into the financial system, aaand, eh, eh, eh, y-y-yuh-y-y-yuh…. The thing I constantly try to emphasize to people is that, if coming in the market was doing fine, nobody would be happier than me, uh, to stay out of it.

ZELENY: Right.

OBAMA: Uh, you know, I — I — I have more than enough to do, uh, without having to worry about the financial system. Uh, and the fact that, uh, we’ve had to take these extraordinary measures, uh, and intervene, uh, is, uhh, not an indication of my ideological preferences —

ZELENY: Mmm-hmm!

OBAMA: — but an indication of the degree to which, uhhh (pause) lax regulation, uh, and extravagant risk taking, uh, has precipitated a crisis.

RUSH: So there you have it, President Obama lamenting the fact that he’s gotta spend all this time on the financial system. But what’s amazing about this is, Bush is the socialist. ‘Hey, I didn’t come up with that Medicare plan!’ as though he would have voted against it? Did Obama vote against any of the TARP bailout money? Maybe he recused himself because he’s running for president, but he would have voted, and did vote, for all of this stuff. As I’m told, they had 90 minutes to think about this phone call before they made it, and it’s frightening to me, here, just how different this guy is without the prompter and how disingenuous. To call himself free market principles? ‘Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir,’ says the New York Times.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is fascinating. Yesterday afternoon, PMSNBC, the New York Times edition — they’ve actually got a show over there at PMSNBC called the ‘New York Times Edition.’ The host of the show, John Harwood, spoke to Jeff Zeleny, who is the New York Times reporter who Obama called after the interview on Air Force One to clarify this ‘socialist’ business. Now, Harwood, with the obligatory ignorance so rampant in the Drive-By Media, says in his question to Zeleny, ‘I think it’s obviously a little silly the charge that Obama’s a socialist, but I wonder, Jeff, the fact that Obama wasn’t able to laugh it off…’ Hey, if it’s not a serious charge, Harwood, why wasn’t he able to laugh it off? Anyway, ‘The fact that he wasn’t able to laugh it off and he called you back later, does that mean the White House thinks that they’re getting hurt by this socialism stuff?’

ZELENY: It’s clear that the White House is a little sensitive to some of these charges, or some of these suggestions that he is a socialist. He used this as an opportunity to lash out directly at his predecessor and other folks like Rush Limbaugh, without using his name directly.

RUSH: Whoa! Obama was talking to me. Obama wanted to get to me when he thought, ‘You know, what? I better call the New York Times back and explain this socialism business.’ New York Times is admitting Obama has me on the brain.